


Freer

by EllieCarina



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: And angst, Crime AU, Did I Mention Angst?, F/M, Gen, Modern AU, also minor hints of sexual themes, angst angst angst, cough, crimeboss kylo, fbi rey, foster system mention, threat of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-10 02:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5568037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieCarina/pseuds/EllieCarina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'd feel freer if you were handcuffed to me.</p><p>Rey can't believe that it's really Ben. In the underworld, they call him Kylo Ren</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the wonderful song "Freer" by Declan Bennett.

 

> **_I’d feel Freer if you were handcuffed to me_ **  
>  **_If we were joined at the hip by pins like Siamese twins_ **  
>  **_I’d feel Freer if you were handcuffed to me_ **
> 
> **_Cos we both live in fear that after a year I’m still stuck in yours_ **
> 
> **_and you are still trapped in my head_ **

* * *

The rain fell like strings and the wind got the water everywhere and made her grip on her Glock19 slithery at best. Rey tried to see past not only the darkness but also the stubborn tears that brimmed in her eyes.

He stood several feet away from her, his own gun raised, pointing at the middle of her chest. His ribs rose and fell under heavy strain. The bullet that had scrapped his side was hers and it had finally made him stop running. He was a dark figure against a darker sky, the dock where their chase had led them deserted. It wouldn’t be for long. And he must’ve known it, must’ve known she wouldn’t engage him without calling for back-up.

Still, no matter how little light reached his features, they were his, painfully bare as they had always been. A long face with a prominent nose, deep-set, turmoiled eyes under thick brows and a wide mouth that had always known how to make her speechless.

She wondered for the umpteenth time how they got here.

They’d been children together once. In that wretched foster home when he was the only person in the world who seemed to care about her at all. And then he’d turned 18 and left her, like everyone else had. When she saw him again, ten years later, there’d been resentment underneath the nostalgia but they had a different sort of renaissance anyway. A couple of hot and desperate nights in the apartment she now shared with a wonderful man named Finn, and then he’d left her again, giving some obscure reason on the lines of: “I’m not good for you, I need to stay away from you and you from me.”

When just two weeks later, his face appeared on a profiler’s presentation, she was sure at first to still be reeling from history repeating itself, and had only imagined it, because truly, she saw his face everywhere. But no. Sure enough, it was Ben. Or Kylo, as it was, his alias, or street name or whatever they called it these days. Blood rushed through her ears, leaving only fragments of the intel understandable. Underground crime ring. _The First Order_. Drugs and weapons and human trafficking and every despicable thing one could imagine. In the space where the head-counts of those guys were provided, as if it was just another thing to tick off like height and bio-points, was a number that made her stomach turn.

She’d chased him then, relentlessly. Equal parts humiliated and enraged, disappointed and deeply, deeply hurt. She couldn’t reconcile either her old memories of the gangly youth that he’d been, carrying her child-self on his shoulders and tickling each other until they both cried with laughter, nor the man she had come to know in the privacy of her bed, so attentive and luscious in his adoration, with this persona he’d created. He was a phantom, a horror story in and of itself in the circles he operated in.

They’d come face to face a couple of times and he always evaded her, looking haunted and marked by uncertainty. As if he wasn’t sure he even wanted to be this person but then he’d turn around, and without fail, committed another horrendous crime. Before long, naturally, her link to him was discoverd and she suddenly became an asset, a kingpin in the investigation and they told her she’d go far in the agency. If she were the one to bring him in, to get Kylo Ren, right hand to the mastermind behind the First Order operation, behind bars - or ten feet under. Her superiors were not explicitly shy of admitting that. Ben - no _Kylo_ , she reprimanded herself - had killed enough agents and police that the entire force of the law wouldn’t mind if he caught a bullet during his apprehension.

And now, a year into this game of cat and mouse, she had him, right there in front of her gun, in a stare-down that threw her back not to other arrests but, shamefully, to wrinkled sheets and his open face as he pushed into her. He’d always study her twisting features as he moved in her, waiting and committing her responses to memory. She tried to shake the thought and focused on the situation at hand, his strange expression and the storm that engulfed them both.

“Put the gun down, Ben,” she yelled, steadily and composed, over the patter of rain, “Or should I call you Kylo now, too?”

“I can’t, Rey,” he yelled back and she shook her head, taking three long strides toward him. He didn’t flinch, did not even readjust his aim and his face took clearer shapes.

“Put. The. Gun. Down,” she repeated, “You know the cavalry is on their way. You’ve got nowhere to go, just put the gun down and let me bring you in, I can help you if you only cooperate.”

“God, it just had to be you, hadn’t it?” He shouted half at the sky and half at her and then, in a rash move, he raised his arms above his head and then folded them over his face, his gun pressed against his forehead. Rey repositioned herself and brought her other hand to secure the grip on her weapon.

Then he shifted, took a deep breath and lowered hands and gun and held his arms out to his side.

“Do it, then,” he said and she sighed in relief, starting a step that was stopped cold as he waved his gun at her again.

“No,” he said, waving her away, an almost incredulous expression on his face, “I’m not letting you _arrest_ me. Shoot me. Get it over with.”

“ _No_ ,” the thought alone was ludicrous, there was no way, she would just.., “Executions are more _your_ style.”

It was a low, low blow and she had no idea why she would say something like that in a situation this dire but she couldn’t escape her personality, not even now.

Ben laughed, the unbelieving, insane laugh of a desperate man, and then he raised his gun anew and shoved it under his own chin.

“BEN,” she screamed and was frozen to her spot, “Don’t you _dare_!”

“Then you do it,” he said, serious as death, locking his determined gaze on hers, his eyes endless pools of a fatalistic sort of sadness, “You said it yourself, I’ve nowhere left to go. If I get arrested, Snoke will find away to get me out of the way before they can even start to prepare a trial. Do it and you’ll be free of me.”

Rey’s face twitched. How could he even know he was something she needed to be free of? Because of course he was, he was stuck in her head, like a broken record, all sighs and growls and fingernails clawing at her insides until they burnt with shame and longing.

“I know, I could do with some freedom,” he said, “I don’t have a choice, Rey. This is the only way I know how to live, I can never get out of the shadows, even if I tried, and I wanted you away from them, that’s all I’ve ever wanted. Kill me. End this. Free me, free yourself!”

“Fuck, Ben,” she yelled in blind frustration, “I’d feel freer if you were _handcuffed_ to me!”

He cocked the gun, clicking the safety off and she lowered her own because there was nothing else she could do.

“Stop!” She yelled out to him, “Just stop.”

And he did, he paused. His eyes were still locking hers in place and she hated him and she loved him and hated him even more for that.

“Go,” she said, a single tear disguised by the raindrops on her cheeks as she made her decision, “I’ll hold them off.”

And then, as he did, he disappeared into the night and Rey was once again left with the shambles of her life. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

This is now being developed into a full-length fic-collab over here: <http://archiveofourown.org/works/5903710>


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